Feb 23, 2021
LISTEN: Dan Abrams Argues Hillary Clinton Would Have Had Better Voter Fraud Claims in 2016 Than Trump in 2020
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ABC chief legal analyst and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams offered a rebuke of those continuing to spread former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” election fraud conspiracy — with a particularly ironic, historical twist.
On his eponymous SiriusXM radio show, Abrams ran through a number of highly improbable, yet still plausible arguments for unfair voter disenfranchisement that could’ve been made in 2016 — by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Abrams began by hypothetically reversing the outcomes of 2016 election, which Clinton lost in the electoral vote, but still won the popular vote by nearly three million.
“I promise you the first argument that Donald Trump, in that hypothetical, and his supporters would be saying is: “How can we possibly allow the will of the people to be ignored,'” he said. “And there is a real, legal argument that you could make that does not abolish the Electoral College and it was an argument that various law professors were encouraging Hillary Clinton to make in the wake of 2016.”
That argument, Abrams explained, was that winner-take-all state apportionment of electors are unconstitutionally disenfranchising the minority votes in their states and, thus, violating the Equal Protection Clause.
“It’s a real argument,” he noted. “I don’t think it’s a winning argument and I’m glad she didn’t make it. But it’s a stronger argument, in my view, than the argument that has been litigated and lost, again and again and again by Team Trump and his allies.”
The second claim involved so-called statistical anomalies in the election results. Abrams noted that several top computer scientists pointed out that Clinton appeared to do noticeably worse in counties in three key swing states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — that used electronic voting machines versus counties that voted by optical scanners or paper ballots. One possible explanation: these counties ballot counting systems could’ve been hacked.
“You’re going to say ‘Wow, I didn’t know that,'” Abrams said. “Why didn’t you know about it? Because Hillary Clinton and her team didn’t amplify it because it was a unproven, theoretical thing. That’s why you didn’t hear about it. But if Donald Trump had been in Hillary Clinton’s position, you tell me. How big a deal would that be?”
Abrams’ next point involved the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election, which the Mueller report confirmed had targeted and hacked the Clinton campaign.
“Imagine if the Clinton campaign had met with the Russians to get dirt on Donald Trump?” Abrams said, offering another historical counterfactual. “Trump supporters would be apoplectic.”
His final example, Abrams noted, sounded similar to the current “big lie” complaints about states allegedly not following their own election laws and the dozens of Trump campaign lawsuits being struck down for lack of standing and lack of merit. He pointed to a post-2016 election analysis from the liberal group Center for American Progress about widespread voter suppression in key swing states.
“These are the same sorts of arguments that Donald Trump and his supporters are making now,” Abrams pointed out. “And I am glad that Hillary Clinton did not make them. Most of them are weak. But on the whole, when you talk about someone who won the popular vote and where the Russians interfered in the election and tried to help your opponent, if that were Donald Trump I could at least understand why he’d be pissed. But he’s got none of that.”
Listen the audio above, via SiriusXM radio.
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Civil Rights Groups Urge Companies To Join Fight Against Georgia Voting Restrictions
Reuters March 5, 2021 0 Comments
Voting rights groups are calling on companies such as Coca-Cola Co and Delta Air Lines Inc to oppose efforts by Republican lawmakers in Georgia to enact sweeping new restrictions on voting access in the battleground state.
The organizations, including Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project and the Georgia NAACP, launched a campaign on social media and in local news outlets this week asking the corporations to take a stand against legislation they said aims to curb turnout from Democratic-leaning Black voters.
Black voters were crucial to helping elect Democrat President Joe Biden in the November election and two Democratic senators in a January run-off in Georgia, a once unthinkable scenario in the traditionally Republican southern state.
“Some of these companies have made beautiful statements for Black Lives Matter,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group focused on increasing Black Americans’ voting access. “Yet here, in the moment where it matters most, they have been silent.”
Republicans in Georgia and across the country are using former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud to back state-level voting changes they say are needed to restore election integrity.
Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court this week to uphold voting restrictions in Arizona in a case that could further hobble the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
They also opposed an election reform bill passed on Wednesday by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. The For the People Act, the most comprehensive voting bill since the 1965 act, faces long odds in the Senate, with Republicans saying it fails to do enough to combat fraud.
In Georgia, likely one of the biggest battlegrounds in the 2022 elections with a U.S. Senate seat and the governor’s office on the ballot, Republican state lawmakers sponsoring the voting measures maintain they are meant to safeguard elections.
A bill passed by the Republican-controlled Georgia House on Monday would restrict ballot drop boxes, tighten absentee voting requirements and limit early voting on Sundays, curtailing traditional “Souls to the Polls” voter turnout programs in Black churches.
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Some voting rights groups have increased their focus on corporations based in Georgia after Popular Information, an online politics newsletter run by Judd Legum, a former aide to Democrat Hillary Clinton, cited campaign finance records https://popular.info/p/georgia showing the companies had donated around $7.4 million since 2018 to politicians sponsoring the voting legislation.
The groups took out several full-page ads in local newspapers urging Delta, Coca-Cola, Southern Company, Home Depot Inc, United Parcel Service Inc and Aflac Inc to stop the donations and support federal voting rights reform.
Albright said the groups will encourage Georgia residents to call the companies and that protests could be organized in front of their offices.
In statements to Reuters, Coca-Cola, UPS, Delta, Home Depot and Aflac said they were committed to voter rights but did not provide specifics about their stance on the Georgia bills or their future political donations.
Coca-Cola said it paused political donations in January, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The company added that it supported efforts to “help facilitate a balanced approach” to the voting bills. Aflac also said it paused all political donations in January.
Delta said it had not made any individual contributions to Georgia House or Senate candidates in 2020.
UPS and Coca-Cola said they were working with local commerce chambers on voting rights issues. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce did not comment on ongoing talks, referring Reuters to a Feb. 16 statement in which the group said it believed it should be “easy to vote, hard to commit fraud.”
Southern Company declined to comment.
U.S. companies in general are becoming more reticent about the exposure that comes with political donations, said Donald Green, a political science professor at Columbia University.
“This will give them yet another excuse to back away from that type of contribution,” Green said.
Georgia’s Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment on voting rights groups’ efforts to enlist companies’ help in fighting the bills.
The Georgia proposals have drawn scrutiny from More Than A Vote, a voter rights organization founded by LeBron James.
The group, which has supported athlete demonstrations in the past, tweeted it was teaming up with the NBA and the Georgia NAACP “to take on voter suppression” at this weekend’s All-Star game in Atlanta.
(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Aurora Ellis)